Service Quality

Background

In December 2011, the CPUC opened a new proceeding to evaluate carrier performance and consider modification to Service Quality Rules. Specifically, the Rulemaking addressed the following issues:

• Provision of adequate information to customers
• Relevance of Service Quality rules in today's market
• Potential implementation of penalty mechanisms

In May 2012, the CPUC issued a Ruling requiring carriers to provide data on such issues as:

• The winter outages of 2010-2011
• Internal standards for service quality
• How networks are monitored
• Industry best practices

DRA's Policy Position

In January 2012, DRA filed comments in response to the December 2011 Rulemaking, urging the CPUC to:

• Uphold the standards adopted in the CPUC 2009 Service Quality decision.
• Extend Service Quality rules and reporting to wireless carriers.
• Conduct targeted engineering audits on telephone carriers providing poor quality service.
• Enforce 90% of repairs within 24 hours standard.
• Strengthen trouble report rate standards.
• Improve network outage recovery response time.
• Implement penalties for telephone carriers that fail to meet those standards.

See DRA's January 31, 2012 Opening Comments. 

See DRA's March 1, 2012 Reply Comments.

In June 2012, DRA submitted comments in response to the CPUC's May 2012 Ruling, recommending the CPUC:

• Assess Service Quality involving multiple, interconnecting platforms.
• Consider addressing service quality problems at network choke points.
• Monitor static, noise, uncompleted and dropped calls over time if a carrier's service quality performance is significantly below enforced standards.
• Modify ARMIS reporting to gather information from all carriers.

See DRA's June 14, 2012 Comments.

Proceeding Status

A CPUC Proposed Decision is expected in early 2013.

See the proceeding docket.